Plug In Baby

Z.vex ap­peal

Long be­fore he donned the rave shades, Matt Bel­lamy was a master of un­usual gui­tar tex­tures, and this neo­clas­si­cal ear­worm is a fine ex­am­ple. Z.vex’s bonkers Fuzz Fac­tory is the key to the open­ing tone: its ger­ma­nium tran­sis­tors can be teased into self-os­cil­la­tion, which pro­vides

the ini­tial squeals, be­fore Bel­lamy launches into the heav­ily-driven riff, likely chan­nelled via one of his sig­na­ture Man­son gui­tars, many of which have since been fit­ted with the pedal. For the rest of the track, run­ning a sub­tle slow phase be­fore your drive pedals will help to cap­ture the sense of move­ment that per­vades through­out the track.